The Mating of Lydia

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

IX

On the following morning, Faversham, for the first time, dressed without assistance, and walked independently—save for his stick—into his sitting-room. The July day was rather chill and rainy and he decided to await Melrose indoors.

As to the "important proposal" his mind was full of conjectures. What he thought most probable was that Melrose intended, according to various fresh hints and indications, to make him another and a more serious offer for his gems—no doubt a big offer. They were worth at least three thousand pounds, and Melrose of course knew their value to a hair.

"Well, I shall not sell them," thought Faversham, his hands behind his head, his eyes following the misty course of the river, and the rain showers scudding over the fells. "I shall not sell them."

His mind clung obstinately to this resolve. His ambitions with regard to money went, in fact, so far beyond anything that three thousand pounds could satisfy, that the inducement to sell at such a price—which he knew to be the market price—and wound thereby the deepest and sincerest of his affections, was not really great. The little capital on which he lived was nearly double the sum, and could be made to yield a fair income by small and judicious speculation. He did not see that he should be much better off for the addition to it of three thousand pounds; and on the other hand, were the gems sold, he should have lost much that he keenly valued—the prestige of ownership; the access which it gave him to circles, learned or wealthy, which had been else closed to him; the distinction attaching thereby to his otherwise obscure name in catalogues and monographs, English or foreign. So long as he possessed the "Mackworth gems" he was, in the eyes of the world of connoisseurs, at any rate, a personage. Without them he was a personage nowhere. Every month, every week, almost, he was beginning to receive requests to be allowed to see and study them, or appeals to lend them for exhibition. In the four months since his uncle's death, both the Louvre and the Berlin Museum had approached him, offering to exhibit them, and hinting that the loan might lead, should he so desire it, to a very profitable sale. If he did anything of the kind, he was pledged of course to give the British Museum the first chance. But he was not going to do it—he was not even going to lend them—yet a while. To possess them, and the kudos that went with them; not to sell them, for sentimental reasons, and even at a money loss, made a poor man proud, and ministered in strange ways to his self-respect, which went often rather hungry; gave him, in short, a standing with himself, and with the world. All the more, that the poor man's mind was in fact, set passionately on the conquest of wealth—real and substantial wealth—to which the paltry sum of three thousand pounds bore no sort of relation.

No, he would not sell them. But he braced himself to a tussle with Melrose, for he seemed to have gathered from a number of small indications that the fierce old collector had set his heart upon them. And no doubt this business of the newly furnished rooms, and all the luxuries that had been given or promised, made it more difficult—had been intended, perhaps, to make it more difficult? Well, he could but say his No and depart, expressing his gratitude—and insisting on the payment of his score!

But—depart where? The energies of renewed health were pulsing through him, and yet he had seldom felt more stranded, or, except in connection with the gems, more insignificant, either to himself or others; in spite of this palace which had been oddly renovated for his convenience. His uncle's death had left him singularly forlorn, deprived of the only home he had ever possessed, and the only person who felt for him a close and spontaneous affection. For his other uncle—his only remaining relation—was a crusty and selfish widower, with whom he had been on little more than formal terms. The rheumatic gout pleaded in the letter to Undershaw had been, he was certain, a mere excuse.

Well—something must be done; some fresh path opened up. He had in Fact left London in a kind of secret exasperation with himself and circumstance, making an excuse out of meeting the Ransoms—mere acquaintances—at Liverpool; and determined, after the short tour to which they had invited him, to plunge himself for a week or two in the depths of a Highland glen where he might fish and think.

The Ransoms, machine manufacturers from St. Louis, had made matters worse. Such wealth!—such careless, vulgar, easily gotten wealth!—heaped up by means that seemed to the outsider so facile, and were, in truth, for all but a small minority, so difficult. A commonplace man and a frivolous woman; yet possessed, through their mere money, of a power over life and its experiences, such as he, Faversham, might strive for all his days and never come near. It might be said of course—Herbert Ransom would probably say it—that all men are worth the wages they get; with an obvious deduction in his own case. But when or where had he ever got his chance—a real chance? Visions of the rich men among his acquaintance, sleek, half-breed financiers, idle, conceited youths of the "classes," pushed on by family interest; pig-headed manufacturers, inheritors of fortunes they could never have made; the fatteners on colonial land and railway speculation—his whole mind rose in angry revolt against the notion that he could not have done, personally, as well as any of them, had there only been the initial shove, the favourable moment.

* * * * *

He envied those who had beaten him in the race, he frankly admitted it; but he must also allow himself the luxury of despising them.

* * * * *

Melrose was late.

Faversham rose and hobbled to the window, his hands on his sides, frowning—a gaunt figure in the rainy light. With the return of physical strength there had come a passionate renewal of desire—desire for happiness and success. The figure of Lydia Penfold hovered perpetually in his mind. Marriage!—his whole being, moral and physical, cried out for it. But how was he ever to marry?—how could he ever give such a woman as that the setting and the scope she could reasonably claim?

"A bad day!" said a harsh voice behind him, "but all the better for business."

Faversham turned to greet his host, the mental and physical nerves tightening.

"Good morning. Well, here I am"—his laugh showed his nervousness—"at your disposal."

He settled himself in his chair. Melrose took a cigarette from the table, and offered one to his guest. He lit and smoked in silence for a few moments, then began to speak with deliberation:

"I gather from our conversations, Faversham, during the last few weeks that you have at the present moment no immediate or pressing occupation?"

Quick colour leapt in Faversham's lean cheek.

"That is true. It happens to be true—for various reasons. But if you mean to imply by that, that I am necessarily—or willingly—an idler, you are mistaken."

"I did not mean to imply anything of the kind. I merely wished, so to speak, to clear the way for what I have to propose."

Faversham nodded. Melrose continued:

"For clearly it would be an impertinence on my part were I to attempt—suddenly—to lift a man out of a fixed groove and career, and suggest to him another. I should expect to be sent to the devil—and serve me right. But in your case—correct me if I am wrong—you seem not yet to have discovered the groove that suits you. Now I am here to propose to you a groove—and a career."

Faversham looked at him with astonishment. The gems, which had been so urgently present to his mind, receded from it. Melrose in his skullcap, sitting sideways in his chair, his cigarette held aloft, presented a profile which might have been that of some Venetian Doge, old, withered and crafty, engaged, say, in negotiation with a Genoese envoy.

"When you were first brought here," Melrose continued—"your presence, as Undershaw has no doubt told you—of course he has told you, small blame to him—was extremely distasteful to me. I am a recluse. I like no women—and d——d few men. I can do without them, that's all; their intimate company, anyway: and my pursuits bring me all the amusement I require. Such at any rate was my frame of mind up to a few weeks ago. I don't apologize for it in the least. Every man has a right to his own idiosyncrasies. But I confess that your society during the last few weeks—I am in no mood for mere compliment—has had a considerable effect upon me. It has revealed to me that I am no longer so young as I was, or so capable—apparently—of entertaining myself. At any rate your company—I put it quite frankly—instead of being a nuisance—has been a godsend. It has turned out that we have many of the same tastes; and your inheritance of the treasures collected by my old friend Mackworth"—("Ah!" thought Faversham, "now we come to it!")—"has made from the first, I think, a link between us. Have I your assent?"

"Certainly."

Melrose paused a moment, and then resumed. The impression he made was that of one rehearsing, point by point, a prepared speech.

"At the same time, I have become more aware than usual of the worries and annoyances connected with the management of my estates. We live, sir, in a world of robbers"—Melrose suddenly rounded on his companion, his withered face aflame—"a world of robbers, and of rapine! Not a single Tom, Dick, and Harry in these parts that doesn't think himself my equal and more. Not a single tenant on my estate that doesn't try at every point to take advantage of his landlord! Not a single tramp or poacher that doesn't covet my goods—that wouldn't murder me if he could, and sleep like a baby afterward. I tell you, sir, we shall see a jacquerie in England, before we are through with these ideas that are now about us like the plague; that every child imbibes from our abominable press!—that our fools of clergy—our bishops even—are not ashamed to preach. There is precious little sense of property, and not a single rag of loyalty or respect left in this country! But when you think of the creatures that rule us—and the fanatics who preach to us—and the fools who bring up our children, what else can you expect! The whole state is rotten! The men in our great towns are ripe for any revolutionary villainy. We shall come to blood, Faversham!"—he struck his hand violently on the arm of his chair—"and then a dictator—the inevitable round. Well, I have done my part. I have fought the battle of property in this country—the battle of every squire in Cumbria, if the dolts did but know their own interests. Instead they have done nothing but thwart and bully me for twenty years. And young Tatham with his County Council nonsense, and his popularity hunting, is one of the very worst of them! Well, now I've done!—personally. I daresay they'll crow—they'll say I'm beat. Anyway, I've done. There'll have to be fighting, but some one else must see to it. I intend to put my affairs into fresh hands. It is my purpose to appoint a new agent—and to give him complete control of my property!"

Melrose stopped abruptly. His hard eyes in their deep, round orbits were fixed on Faversham. The young man was mainly conscious of a half-hysterical inclination to laugh, which he strangled as he best could. Was he to be offered the post?

"And, moreover," Melrose resumed, "I want a secretary—I want a companion—I want some one who will help me to arrange the immense, the priceless collections there are stacked in this house—unknown to anybody—hardly known, in the lapse of years, even to myself. I desire to unravel my own web, so to speak—to spin off my own silk—to examine and analyze what I have accumulated. There are rooms here—containing masterpieces—unique treasures—that have never been opened for years—whose contents I have myself forgotten. That's why people call me a madman. Why? What did I want with a big establishment eating up my income?—with a lot of prying idiots from outside—museum bores, bothering me for loans—common tourists, offering impertinent tips to my housekeeper, or picking and stealing, perhaps, when her back was turned! I bought the things, and shut them up. They were safe, anyway. But now that process has gone on for a quarter of a century. You come along. A chance—a freak—a caprice, if you like, makes me arrange these rooms for you. That gives me new ideas—"

He turned and looked with sharp, slow scrutiny round the walls:

"The fact is I have been so far engaged in hoarding—heaping together. The things in this house—my extraordinary collections—have been the nuts—and I, the squirrel. But now the nuts are bursting out of the hole, and the squirrel wants to see what he's got. That brings me to my point!"

He turned emphatically toward Faversham, leaning hard on a marqueterie table that stood between them:

"I offer you, sir, the post, the double post, of agent to my property, and of private secretary, or assistant to myself. I offer you a salary of three thousand a year—three thousand pounds, a year—if you will undertake the management of my estates, and be my lieutenant in the arrangement of my collections. I wish—as I have said—to unpack this house; and I should like to leave my property in order before I die. Which reminds me, I should of course be perfectly ready to make proper provision, by contract, or otherwise, so that in the event of any sudden termination of our agreement—my death for instance—you should be adequately protected. Well, there, in outline, is my proposal!"

During this extraordinary speech Faversham's countenance had reflected with tolerable clearness the various impressions made by it—incredulous or amused astonishment—bewilderment—deepening gravity—coming round again to astonishment. He raised himself in his chair.

"You wish to make me your agent—the agent for these immense estates?"

"I do. I had an excellent agent once—twenty years ago. But old Dovedale stole him from me—bribed him by higher pay. Since then I have had nothing but clerks—rent-collectors—rascally makeshifts, all of them."

"But I know nothing about land—I have had no experience!"

"A misfortune—but in some ways to the good. I don't want any cocksure fellow, with brand-new ideas lording it over me. I should advise you of course."

"But—at the same time—I should not be content with a mere clerk's
place, Mr. Melrose," said Paversham, a momentary flash in his dark eye.
"I am one of those men who are better as principals than as subordinates.
Otherwise I should be in harness by now."

Melrose eyed him askance for a moment—then said: "I understand. I should be willing to steer my course accordingly—to give you a reasonable freedom. There are two old clerks in the estate-office, who know everything that is to be known about the property, and there are my solicitors both in Carlisle and Pengarth. For the rest, you are a lawyer, and there are some litigations pending. Your legal knowledge would be of considerable service. If you are the clever fellow I take you for, a month or two's hard work, the usual technical books, some expert advice—and I have little doubt you would make as good an agent as any of them. Mind, I am not prepared to spend unlimited money—nor to run my estates as a Socialist concern. But I gather you are as good a Conservative as myself."

Faversham was silent a moment, observing the man before him. The whole thing was too astounding. At last he said: "You are not prepared, sir, you say, to spend unlimited money. But the sum you offer me is unheard of."

"For an agent, yes—for a secretary, yes—for a combination of the two, under the peculiar circumstances, the market offers no precedents. You and I make a market—and a price."

"You would expect me to live in this house?"

"I gather these rooms are not disagreeable to you?"

"Disagreeable! They are too sumptuous. If I did this thing, sir, I should want to do it in a businesslike way."

"You want an office? Take your choice." Melrose's gesture indicated the rest of the house. "There are rooms enough. But you will want some place, I imagine, where you can be at home, receive friends—like the young lady and her mother yesterday—and so on."

His smile made him more Ogreish than before.

He resumed:

"And by the way, if you accepted my proposal, I should naturally expect that for a time you would devote yourself wholly to the organization of the collections, inside the house, and to the work of the estate, outside it. But you are of an age when a man hopes to marry. I should of course take that into account. In a year or two—"

"Oh, I have no immediate ideas of that kind," said Faversham, hastily.

There was a pause. At the end of it Faversham turned on his companion. A streak of feverish colour, a sparkling vivacity in the eyes, showed the effect produced by the conversation. But he had kept his head throughout the whole interview, and a certain unexpected strength in his personality had revealed itself to Melrose:

"You will hardly expect me, sir, to give an immediate answer to these proposals?"

"Take your time—take your time—in moderation," said Melrose, drumming on the table before him.

"And there are of course a few things that I on my side should wish to know."

A series of inquiries followed: as to the term of the proposed engagement; the degree of freedom that would be granted him; the date at which his duties would begin, supposing he undertook them—("To-morrow, if it pleases you!" said Melrose, jovially)—passing on to the general circumstances of the estates, and the nature of the pending litigations. The questions were put with considerable tact, but were none the less shrewd. Melrose's strange character with its mixture of sagacity, folly, and violence, had never been more acutely probed—though quite indirectly.

At the end of them his companion rose.

"You have a talent for cross-examination," he said with a rather sour smile. "I leave you. We have talked enough."

"Let me at least express before you go the gratitude I feel for proposals so flattering—so generous," said Faversham, not without emotion; "and for all the kindness I have received here, a kindness that no man could ever forget."

Melrose looked at him oddly, seemed about to speak—then muttered something hardly intelligible, ceased abruptly, and departed.

* * * * *

The master of the Tower went slowly to his library through the splendid gallery, where Mrs. Dixon and the new housemaid were timidly dusting. But he took no notice of them. He went into his own room, locked his door, and having lit his own fire, he settled down to smoke and ruminate. He was exhausted, and his seventy years asserted themselves. The radical alteration in his habits and outlook which the preceding six weeks had produced, the excitement of unpacking the treasures now displayed in the gallery, the constant thinkings and plannings connected with Faversham and the future, and, lastly, the interview just concluded, had tried his strength. Certain symptoms—symptoms of old age—annoyed him though he would not admit it. No doubt some change was wanted. He must smoke less—travel less—give himself more variety and more amusement. Well, if Faversham consented, he should at least have bought for himself a companionship that was agreeable to him, and relief from a number of routine occupations which he detested.

Suddenly—a child's voice—a child's shrill voice, ringing through the gallery—followed by scufflings and hushings, on the part of an older person—then a wail—and silence. Melrose had risen to his feet with an exclamation. Some peculiar quality in the voice—some passionate, thrilling quality—had produced for the moment an extraordinary illusion.

He recovered himself in a moment. It was of course the child of the upholstress who had been working in the house for a week or so. He remembered to have noticed the little girl. But the sound had inevitably suggested thoughts he had no wish to entertain. He had a letter in his pocket at that moment which he did not mean to answer—the first he had received for many years. If he once allowed a correspondence to grow up—with that individual—on the subject of money, there would be no end to it; it would spread and spread, till his freedom was once more endangered. He did not intend that persons, who had been once banished from his life, should reenter it—on any pretext. Netta had behaved to him like a thief and a criminal, and with the mother went the child. They were nothing to him, and never should be anything. If she was in trouble, let her go to her own people.

He took out the letter, and dropped it into the midst of the burning logs before him. Then he turned to a heap of sale catalogues lying near him, and after going through them, he rose, and as though drawn to it by a magnetic power, he went to the Riesener table, and unlocked the drawer which held the gems.

Bringing them back to the fireside he watched the play of the flames on their shining surfaces, delighting greedily in their beauty; in the long history attaching to each one of them, every detail of which he knew; in the sense of their uniqueness. Nothing like them of their kind, anywhere; and there they were in his hand, after these years of fruitless coveting. He had often made Mackworth offers for them; and Mackworth had laughed at him.

Well, he had bid high enough this time, not for the gems themselves, but for the chance of some day persuading their owner to entertain the notion of selling them. It pleased him to guess at what had been probably Faversham's secret expectation that morning of a proposal for them; and to think that he had baffled it.

He might, of course, have made some quite preposterous offer which would have forced the young man's hand. But that might have meant, probably would have meant, the prompt departure of the enriched Faversham. But he wanted both Faversham and the gems; as much as possible—that is, for his money. The thought of returning to his former solitariness was rapidly becoming intolerable to him. Meanwhile the adorable things were still under his roof; and with a mad pleasure he relocked the drawer.

* * * * *

Faversham spent the rest of the morning in cogitations that may be easily imagined. He certainly attributed some share in the extraordinary proposal that had been made to him, to his possession of the gems, and to Melrose's desire to beguile them from him. But what then? Sufficient for the day! He would decide how to deal with that crisis when it should arrive.

Meanwhile, the amazing proposal itself was before him. If it were accepted, he should be at once a comparatively rich man, with an infinity of chances for the future; for Melrose's financial interest and influence were immense. If not free to marry immediately, he would certainly be free—as Melrose himself had hinted—to prepare for marriage. But could he do the work?—could he get on with the old man?—could he endure the life?

After luncheon Dixon, with the subdued agitation of manner which showed the advent of yet another change in the household, came in to announce that a motor had come from Carlisle, that Mr. Melrose did not propose to use it himself, and hoped that Mr. Faversham would take a drive.

It was the invalid's first excursion into the outer world.

He sat breathing in great draughts of the scented summer air, feeling his life and strength come back into him.

The rain had passed, and the fells rose clear and high above the moist hay meadows and the fresh-leaved trees.

As they emerged upon the Keswick road he tapped the chauffeur on the shoulder. "Do you know Green Cottage?"

"Mrs. Penfold's, sir? Certainly."

"How far is it?"

"I should say about two miles."

"Go there, please."

The two miles passed for Faversham in a double excitement he had some difficulty in concealing; the physical excitement of change and movement, of this reentry upon a new world, which was the old; and the mental excitement of his own position.

At the cottage door, he dismounted slowly. The maid-servant said she thought Mrs. Penfold was in the garden. Would the gentleman please come in?

Faversham, leaning on his stick, made his way through the tiny hall of the cottage, and the drawing-room door was thrown open for him. A young lady was sitting at the farther end, who rose with a slight cry of astonishment. It was Lydia.

Through her reception of him Faversham soon learnt what are the privileges of the wounded, and how glad are all good women of excuses to be kind. Lydia placed him in the best chair, in front of the best view, ordered tea, and hovered round him with an eager benevolence. Her mother, she said, would be in directly. Faversham, on his side, could only secretly hope that Mrs. Penfold's walk might be prolonged.

They were not interrupted. Lydia, with concern, conjectured that Mrs. Penfold and Susan had gone to visit a couple of maiden ladies, living half a mile off along the road. But she showed not the smallest awkwardness in entertaining her guest. The rain of the morning had left the air chilly, and a wood fire burnt on the hearth. Its pleasant flame gave an added touch of intimity to the little drawing-room, with its wild flowers, its books, its water-colours, and its modest furnishings. After the long struggle of his illness, and the excitement of the morning, Faversham was both soothed and charmed. His whole nature relaxed; happiness flowed in. Presently, on an impulse he could not resist, he told her of the offer which had been made to him.

Lydia's embroidery dropped on her lap.

"Mr. Melrose's agent!" she repeated, in wonder. "He has offered you that?"

"He has—on most generous terms. Shall I take it?"

She flushed a little, for the ardent deference in his eyes was not easy to ignore. But she examined his news seriously—kindling over it.

"His agent—agent for his miserable, neglected property! Heavens, what a chance!"

She looked at him, her soul in her face. Something warned him to be cautious.

"You think it so neglected?"

"I know it: but ask Lord Tatham! He's chairman of some committee or other—he'll tell you."

"But perhaps I shall have to fight Tatham? Suppose that turns out to be my chief business?"

"Oh, no, you can't—you can't! He's too splendid—in all those things."

"He is of course the model youth," said Faversham dryly.

"Ah, but you can't hate him either!" cried Lydia, divining at once the shade of depreciation. "He is the kindest, dearest fellow! I agree—it's provoking not to be able to sniff at him—such a Prince Charming—with all the world at his feet. But one can't—one really can't!"

Jealousy sprang up sharply in Faversham, though a wider experience of the sex might have suggested to him that women do not generally shower public praise on the men they love. Lydia, however, quickly left the subject, and returned to his own affairs. Nothing, he confessed, could have been friendlier or sincerer than her interest in them. They plunged into the subject of the estate; and Faversham stood amazed at her knowledge of the dales-folk, their lives and their grievances. At the end, he drew a long breath.

"By George!—can I do it?"

"Oh, yes, yes, yes!" said Lydia eagerly, driving her needle into the sofa cushion. "You'll reform him!"

Faversham laughed.

"He's a tough customer. He has already warned me I am not to manage his estates like a Socialist."

"No—but like a human being!" cried Lydia, indignantly—"that's all we want. Come and talk to Lord Tatham!"

"Parley with my employer's opponent!"

"Under a flag of truce," laughed Lydia, "and this shall be the neutral ground. You shall meet here—and mamma and I will hold the lists."

"You think—under those circumstances—we should get through much business?" His dark eyes, full of gaiety, searched hers. She flushed a little.

"Ah, well, you should have the chance anyway."

Faversham rose unwillingly to go. Lydia bent forward, listening.

"At last—here comes my mother."

For outside in the little hall there was suddenly much chatter and swishing of skirts. Some one came laughing to the drawing-room and threw it open. Mrs. Penfold, flushed and excited, stood in the doorway.

"My dear, did you ever know such kind people!"

Her arms were laden with flowers, and with parcels of different sorts.
Susy came behind, carrying two great pots of Japanese lilies.

"You said you'd like to see those old drawings of Keswick—by I forget whom. Lady Tatham has sent you the whole set—they had them—you may keep them as long as you like. And Lord Tatham has sent flowers. Just look at those roses!" Mrs. Penfold put down the basket heaped with them at Lydia's feet, while Susy—demurely—did the same with the lilies. "And there is a fascinating parcel of books for Susy—all the new reviews! … Oh! Mr. Faversham—I declare—why, I never saw you!"

Voluble excuses and apologies followed. Meanwhile Lydia, with a bright colour, stood bewildered, the flowers all about her, and the drawings in her hands. Faversham escaped as soon as he could. As he approached Lydia to say good-bye, she looked up, put the drawings aside, and hurriedly came with him to the door.

"Accept!" she said. "Be sure you accept!"

He had a last vision of her standing in the dark hall, and of her soft, encouraging look. As he drove away, two facts stood out in consciousness: first, that he was falling fast and deep in love; next, that—by the look of things—he had a rival, with whom, in the opinion of all practical people, it would be mere folly for him to think of competing.

BOOK II

X

While Faversham was driving back to Threlfall, his mind possessed by a tumult of projects and images—which was a painful tumult, because his physical strength was not yet equal to coping with it—a scene was passing in a bare cottage beside the Ulls-water road, whence in due time one of those events was to arise which we call sudden or startling only because we are ignorant of the slow [Greek: anankê ] which has produced them.

An elderly man had just entered the cottage after his day's work. He was evidently dead tired, and he had sunk down on a chair beside a table which held tea things and some bread and butter. His wife could be heard moving about in the lean-to scullery behind the living-room.

The man sat motionless, his hands hanging over his knees, his head bent. He seemed to be watching the motes dancing in a shaft of dusty sunlight that had found its way into the darkened room. For the western sun was blazing on the front, the blinds were down, and the little room was like an oven. The cottage was a new one and stood in a bare plot of garden, unshaded and unsheltered, on a stretch of road which crossed the open fell. It was a labourer's cottage, but the furniture of the living-room was superior in quality to that commonly found in the cottages of the neighbourhood. A piano was crowded into one corner, and a sideboard, too large for the room, occupied the wall opposite the fireplace.

The man sitting in the chair also was clearly not an ordinary labourer. His brown suit, though worn and frayed, had once been such a suit as Messrs. Carter, tailors, of Pengarth, were accustomed to sell to their farmer clients, and it was crossed by an old-fashioned chain and seal. The suit was heavily splashed with mud; so were the thick boots; and on the drooped brow shone beads of sweat. John Brand was not much over fifty, but he was tired out in mind and body; and his soul was bitter within him.

A year before this date he had been still the nominal owner of a small freehold farm between Pengarth and Carlisle, bordering on the Threlfall property. But he was then within an ace of ruin, and irreparable calamity had since overtaken him.

How it was that he had fallen into such a plight was still more or less mysterious to a dull brain. Up to the age of forty-seven, he had been employed on his father's land, with little more than the wages of a labourer, possessing but small authority over the men working on the farm, and no liberty but such as the will of a tyrannical master allowed him. Then suddenly the father died, and Brand succeeded to the farm. All his long-checked manhood asserted itself. There was a brief period of drinking, betting, and high living. The old man had left a small sum of ready money in the bank, which to the son, who had always been denied the handling of money, seemed riches. It was soon spent, and then unexpected burdens and claims disclosed themselves. There was a debt to the bank, which there were no means of paying. And he discovered to his dismay that a spinster cousin of his mother's had lent money to his father within the preceding five years, on the security of his stock and furniture. Where the borrowed money had gone no one knew, but the spinster cousin, alarmed perhaps by exaggerated accounts of the new man's drinking habits, pressed for repayment.

Brand set his teeth, ceased to spend money, and did his best to earn it. But he was a stupid man, and the leading-strings in which his life had been held up to middle age had enfeebled such natural powers as he possessed. His knowledge was old-fashioned, his methods slovenly; and his wife, as harmless as himself, but no cleverer, could do nothing to help him. By dint, however, of living and working hard he got through two or three years, and might just have escaped his fate—for his creditors, at that stage, were all ready to give him time—had not ill-fortune thrown him across the path of Edmund Melrose. The next farm to his belonged to the Threlfall estate. Melrose's methods as a landlord had thrown out one tenant after another, till he could do nothing but put in a bailiff and work it himself. The bailiff was incompetent, and a herd of cattle made their way one morning through a broken fence that no one had troubled to mend, and did serious damage to Brand's standing crops. Melrose was asked to compensate, and flatly declined. The fence was no doubt his; but he claimed that it had been broken by one of Brand's men. Hence the accident. The statement was false, and the evidence supporting it corrupt. Moreover the whole business was only the last of a series of unneighbourly acts on the part both of the bailiff and landowner, and a sudden fury blazed up in Brand's slow mind. He took his claim to the county court and won his case; the judge allowing himself a sharp sentence or two on the management of the Threlfall property. Brand spent part of his compensation money in entertaining a group of friends at a Pengarth public. But that was the last of his triumph. Thenceforward things went mysteriously wrong with him. His creditors, first one, then all, began to tighten their pressure on him; and presently the bank manager—the Jove of Brand's little world—passed abruptly from civility or indulgence, to a peremptory reminder that debts were meant to be paid. A fresh bill of sale on furniture and stock staved off disaster for a time. But a bad season brought it once more a long step nearer, and the bank, however urgently appealed to, showed itself adamant, not only as to any further advance, but as to any postponement of their own claim. Various desperate expedients only made matters worse, and after a few more wretched months during which his farm deteriorated, and his business went still further to wreck, owing largely to his own distress of mind, Brand threw up the sponge. He sold his small remaining interest in his farm, which did not even suffice to pay his debts, and went out of it a bankrupt and broken man, prematurely aged. A neighbouring squire, indignant with what was commonly supposed to be the secret influences at work in the affair, offered him the post of bailiff in a vacant farm; and he and his family migrated to the new-built cottage on the Ullswater road.

As to these secret influences, they were plain enough to many people. Melrose who had been present on the day when the case was tried had left the court-house in a fury, in company with a certain ill-famed solicitor, one Nash, who had worked up the defence, and had served the master of Threlfall before in various litigations connected with his estates, such as the respectable family lawyers in Carlisle and Pengarth would have nothing to do with. Nash told his intimates that night that Brand would rue his audacity, and the prophecy soon dismally fulfilled itself. The local bank to which Brand owed money had been accustomed for years to deal with very large temporary balances—representing the rents of half the Threlfall estates. Nash was well known to the manager, as one of those backstairs informants, indispensable in a neighbourhood where every farmer wanted advances—now on his crops—now on his stock—and the leading bank could only escape losses by the maintenance of a surprising amount of knowledge as to each man's circumstances and character. Nash was observed on one or two occasions going in and out of the bank's private room, at moments corresponding with some of the worst crises of Brand's fortunes. And with regard to other creditors, no one could say precisely how they were worked on, but they certainly showed a surprising readiness to join in the harrying of a struggling and helpless man.

In any case Brand believed, and had good cause for believing, that he had been ruined by Melrose in revenge for the county court action. His two sons believed it also.

The tired man sat brooding over these things in the little hot room. His wife came in, and stood at the door observing him, twisting her apron in a pair of wet hands.

"Yo'll have your tea?"

"Aye. Where are t' lads?"

"Johnnie's gotten his papers. He's gane oot to speak wi' the schoolmaster. He's thinkin' o' takkin' his passage for t' laast week in t' year."

Brand made no reply. Johnnie, the elder son, was the apple of his eye. But an uncle had offered him half his passage to Quebec, and his parents could not stand in the way.

"An' Will?"

"He's cleanin' hissel'."

As she spoke, wavering steps were heard on the stairs, and while she returned to her kitchen the younger son, Will Brand, opened the door of the front room.

He was a lanky, loose-jointed youth of twenty, with a long hatchet face. His movements were strangely clumsy, and his eye wandered. The neighbours had always regarded him as feeble-witted; and about a year before this time an outburst of rough practical joking on the lad's part—sudden jumpings out from hedges to frighten school-children going home, or the sudden whoopings and howlings of a white-sheeted figure, for the startling of lovers in the gloaming—had drawn the attention of the Whitebeck policeman to his "queerness." Only his parents knew of what fits of rage he was capable.

He wore now, as he came into the living-room, an excited, quasi-triumphant look, which did not escape his father.

"What you been after, Will?"

"Helpin' Wilson."

Wilson was a neighbouring keeper, who in June and July, before the young pheasants were returned to the woods, occasionally employed Will Brand as a watcher, especially at night.

Brand made no reply. His wife brought in the tea, and he and Will helped themselves greedily. Presently Will said abruptly:

"A've made that owd gun work all right."

"Aye?" Brand's tone was interrogative, but listless.

"I shot a kestrel an' a stoat wi' un this morning."

"Yo'did, eh?"

Will nodded, his mouth crammed with bread and butter, strange lights and flickering expressions playing over his starved, bony face.

"Wilson says I'm gettin' a varra fair shot."

"Aye? I've heard tha' practisin'." Brand turned a pair of dull eyes upon his son.

"An' I wish tha' wudn't do't i' my garden!" said Mrs. Brand, with energy. "I doan't howd wi' guns an' shootin' aboot, in a sma' garden, wi' t' washin' an' aw."

"It's feyther's garden, ain't it, as long as he pays t' rent!" said Will, bringing his hand down on the table with sudden passion. "Wha's to hinder me? Mebbe yo' think Melrose 'ull be aboot."

"Howd your tongue, Willie," said his mother, mildly. "We werena taakin' o' Melrose."

"Noa—because we're aye thinkin'!"

The lad's eyes blazed as he roughly pushed his cup for a fresh supply. His mother endeavoured to soothe him by changing the subject. But neither husband nor son encouraged her. A gloomy silence fell over the tea-table. Presently Brand moved, and with halting step went to the little horsehair sofa, and stretched himself full length upon it. Such an action on his part was unheard of. Both wife and son stared at him without speaking. Then Mrs. Brand got up, fetched an old shawl, and put it over her husband who had closed his eyes. Will left the room, and sitting on a stool outside the cottage door, with the old gun between his knees, he watched the sunset as it flushed the west, and ran along the fell-tops, till little by little the summer night rose from the purple valley, or fell softly from the emerging stars, and day was done.

* * * * *

A fortnight later, Mr. Louis Delorme, the famous portrait painter, arrived at Duddon Castle. Various guests had been invited to meet him. Two guests—members of the Tatham family—had invited themselves, much to Lady Tatham's annoyance. And certain neighbours were coming to dine; among them Mrs. Penfold and her daughters.

Dinner was laid in a white-pillared loggia, built by an "Italianate" Lord Tatham in the eighteenth century on the western side of the house, communicating with the dining-room behind it, and with the Italian garden in front. It commanded the distant blue line of the Keswick and Ullswater mountains, and a foreground of wood and crag, while the Italian garden to which the marble steps of the loggia descended, with its formal patterns of bright colour, blue, purple, and crimson, lay burning in the afterglow of sunset light, which, in a northern July, will let you read till ten o'clock.

The guests gathered on the circle of smooth-shaven grass that in the centre made a space around a fountain, with a gleaming water nymph. A broad grass pathway led them to the house, so that guests emerging from it arrived in rather spectacular fashion—well seen, against the ivied walls of the castle, to the unfair advantage, as usual, of grace and good looks.

Before hostess or neighbours appeared, however, Mr. Delorme and a certain Gerald Tatham, Lady Tatham's brother-in-law, had the green circle to themselves. Gerald Tatham was one of the uninvited guests. He considered himself entitled to descend on Duddon twice a year, and generally left it having borrowed money of his nephew, in elaborate forgetfulness of a similar transaction twelve months earlier still undischarged. He was married, but his wife did not pay visits with him. Victoria greatly preferred her—plain and silent as she was—to her husband; but realizing what a relief it must be to a woman to get such a man off her hands as often as possible, she never pressed her to come to Duddon. Meanwhile Gerald Tatham passed as an agreeable person, well versed in all those affairs of his neighbours which they would gladly have kept to themselves, and possessed of certain odd pockets of knowledge, sporting or financial, which helped him to earn the honest or doubtful pennies on which his existence depended.

Delorme and he got on excellently. Gerald respected the painter as a person whose brush, in a strangely constituted world, was able to supply him with an income which even the sons of land or commerce might envy; and secretly despised him for a lack of grandfathers, for his crop of black curls, his southern complexion and his foreign birth. Delorme thought Gerald an idler of no account, and perceived in him the sure signs of a decadence which was rapidly drawing the English aristocratic class into the limbo of things that were. But Gerald was an insatiable hawker of gossip; and a fashionable painter, with an empire among young and pretty women, must keep himself well stocked with that article.

So the two walked up and down together, talking pleasantly enough. Presently Delorme, sweeping a powerful hand before him, exclaimed on the beauty of the castle and its surroundings.

"Yes—a pretty place," said Gerald, carelessly, "and, for once, money enough to keep it up."

"Your nephew is a lucky fellow. Why don't they marry him."

"No hurry! When it does come off my sister-in-law will do something absurd."

"Something sentimental? I'll bet you she doesn't! Democracy is all very well—except when it comes to marriage. Then even idealists like Lady Tatham knock under."

"I wish you may be right. Anyway, she won't send him to New York!"

"No need! Blue blood—impoverished!—that's my forecast."

Gerald smiled—ungenially.

"Victoria would positively dislike an heiress. Jolly easy to take that sort of line—on forty thousand a year! But as to birth, the family, in my opinion, has a right to be considered."

Delorme hesitated a moment, then threw a provocative look at his companion, the look of the alien to whom English assumptions are sometimes intolerable.

"Pretty mixed—your stocks—some of them—by now!"

"Not ours. You'd find, if you looked into it, that we've descended very straight. There's been no carelessness."

Delorme threw up his hands.

"Good heavens! Carelessness, as you call it, is the only hope for a family nowadays. A strong blood—that's what you want—a blood that will stand this modern life—and you'll never get that by mating in and in. Ah! here come the others."

They turned, and saw a stream of people coming round the corner of the house. The rector and Mrs. Deacon—the gold cross on the rector's waistcoat shining in the diffused light. Lady Barbara Woolson, the other uninvited guest, Victoria's first cousin; a young man in a dinner jacket and black tie walking with Lady Tatham; a Madonnalike woman in black, hand in hand with a tall schoolboy; and two elderly gentlemen.

But in front—some little way in front—there walked a pair for whom all the rest appeared to be mere escort and attendance; so vivid, so charged with meaning they seemed, among the summer flowers, and under the summer sky.

A slender girl in white, and a tall youth looking down upon her, treading the grass just slightly in advance of her, with a happy deference, as though he led in the fairy queen. So delicate were her proportions, so bright her hair, and so compelling the charm that floated round her, that Delorme, dropping his cigarette, hastily put up his eyeglasses, and fell into his native tongue.

"Sapristi!—quelle petite fée avez-vous là?"

"My sister-in-law talked of some neighbours—"

"Mais elle entre en reine! My dear fellow, it looks dangerous."

Gerald pulled his moustaches, looking hard at the advancing pair.

"A pretty little minx—I must have it out with Victoria." But his tone was doubtful. It was not easy to have things out with Victoria.

* * * * *

The dinner under the loggia went gaily. Not many courses; much fruit; a shimmer of tea-roses before the guests; and the scent of roses blowing in from the garden outside.

Victoria had Delorme on her right, and Lydia sat next the great man. Tatham could only glance at her from afar. On his right, he had his cousin, Lady Barbara, whom he cordially disliked. Her yearly visit, always fixed and announced by herself, was a time of trial both for him and his mother, but they endured it out of a sentimental and probably mistaken belief that the late Lord Tatham had—in her youth—borne her a cousinly affection. Lady Barbara was a committee-woman, indefatigable, and indiscriminate. She lived and gloried in a chronic state of overwork, for which no one but herself saw the necessity. Her conversation about it only confirmed the frivolous persons whom she tried to convert to "social service," in their frivolity. After a quarter of an hour's conversation with her, Tatham was generally dumb, and as nearly rude as his temperament allowed. While, as to his own small efforts, his cottages, County Council, and the rest, no blandishments would have drawn from him a word about them; although, like many of us, Lady Barbara would gladly have purchased leave to talk about her own achievements by a strictly moderate amount of listening to other people's.

On his other side sat a very different person—the sweet-faced lady, whose boy of fourteen sitting opposite kept up with her through dinner a shy telegraphy of eye and smile. They were evidently alone in the world, and everything to each other. She was a widow—a Mrs. Edward Manisty, whose husband, a brilliant but selfish man of letters, had died some four years before this date. His wife had never found out that he was selfish; her love had haloed him; though she had plenty of character of her own. She herself was an American, a New Englander by birth, carrying with her still the perfume of a quiet life begun among the hills of Vermont, and in sight of the Adirondacks; a life fundamentally Puritan and based on Puritan ideals; yet softened and expanded by the modern forces of art, travel, and books. Lucy Manisty had attracted her husband, when he, a weary cosmopolitan, had met her first in Rome, by just this touch of something austerely sweet, like the scent of lavender or dewy grass; and she had it still—mingled with a kind humour—in her middle years, which were so lonely but for her boy. She and Victoria Tatham had made friends on the warm soil of Italy, and through a third person, a rare and charming woman, whose death had first made them really known to each other.

"I never saw anything so attractive!" Mrs. Manisty was murmuring in
Tatham's ear.

He followed the direction of her eyes, and his fair skin reddened.

"She is very pretty, isn't she?"

"Very—like a Verrocchio angel—who has been to college! She is an artist?"

"She paints. She admires Delorme."

"That one can see. And he admires her!"

"We—my mother—wants him to paint her."

"He will—if he knows his own business."

"A Miss Penfold?" said Lady Barbara, putting up her eyeglass. "You say she paints. The modern girl must always do something! My girls have been brought up for home."

A remark that drove Tatham into a rash defence of the modern girl to which he was quite unequal, and in which indeed he was half-hearted, for his fundamental ideas were quite as old-fashioned as Lady Barbara's. But Lydia, for him, was of no date; only charm itself, one with all the magic and grace that had ever been in the world, or would be.

Suddenly he saw that she was looking at him—a bright, signalling look, only to tell him how hugely well she was getting on with Delorme. He smiled in return, but inwardly he was discontented. Always this gay camaraderie—like a boy's. Not the slightest tremor in it. Not a touch of consciousness—or of sex. He could not indeed have put it so. All he knew was that he was always thirstily seeking something she showed no signs of giving him.

But he himself was being rapidly swept off his feet. Since their meeting at Threlfall, which had been interrupted by Melrose's freakish return, there had been other meetings, as delightful as before, yet no more conclusive or encouraging. He and Lydia had indeed grown intimate. He had revealed to her thoughts and feelings which he had unveiled for no one else—not even for Victoria—since he was a boy at school with boyish friendships. And she had handled them with such delicacy, such sweetness; such frankness too, in return as to her own "ideas," those stubborn intractable ideas, which made him frown to think of. Yet all the time—he knew it—there had been no flirting on her part. Never had she given him the smallest ground to think her in love with him. On the contrary, she had maintained between them for all her gentleness, from beginning to end, that soft, intangible barrier which at once checked and challenged him.

Passion ran high in him. And, moreover, he was beginning to be more than vaguely jealous. He had seen for himself how much there was in common between her and Faversham; during the last fortnight he had met Faversham at the cottage on several occasions; and there had been references to other visits from the new agent. He understood perfectly that Lydia was broadly, humanly interested in the man's task: the poet, the enthusiast in her was stirred by what he might do, if he would, for the humble folk she loved. But still, there they were—meeting constantly. "And he can talk to her about all the things I can't!"

His earlier optimism had quite passed by now; probably, though unconsciously, under the influence of Lydia's nascent friendship with Faversham. There had sprung up in him instead a constant agitation and disquiet that could no longer be controlled. No help—but rather danger—lay in waiting….

Delorme had now turned away from Lydia to his hostess, and Lydia was talking to Squire Andover on her other side, a jolly old boy, with a gracious, absent look, who inclined his head to her paternally. Tatham knew very well that there was no one in the county who was more rigidly tied to caste or rank. But he was kind always to the outsider—kind therefore to Lydia. Good heavens!—as if there was any one at the table fit to tie her shoe-string!

His pulses raced. The heat, the golden evening, the flowers, all the lavish colour and scents of nature, seemed to be driving him toward speech—toward some expression of himself, which must be risked, even if it lead him to disaster.

* * * * *

The dinner which appeared to Tatham interminable, and was really so short, by Victoria's orders, that Squire Andover felt resentfully he had had nothing to eat, at last broke up. The gentlemen lingered smoking on the loggia. The ladies dispersed through the garden, and Delorme—after a look round the male company—quietly went with them. So did the gentleman in the dinner jacket and black tie. Tatham, impatiently doing his duty as host, could only follow the fugitives with his eyes, their pale silks and muslins, among the flowers and under the trees.

But his guests, over their cigars, were busy with some local news, and, catching Faversham's name, Tatham presently recalled his thoughts sufficiently to listen to what was being said. The topic, naturally, was Faversham's appointment. Every landowner there was full of it. He had been seen in Brampton on market day driving in a very decent motor; and since his accession he had succeeded in letting two or three of the derelict farms, on a promise of repairs and improvements which had been at last wrung out of Melrose. It was rumoured also that the most astonishing things were happening in the house and the gardens.

"Who on earth is the man, and where does he come from?" asked a short, high-shouldered man with a blunt, pugnacious face. He was an ex-officer, a J.P., and one of the most active Conservative wire-pullers of the neighbourhood. He and Victoria Tatham were the best of friends. They differed on almost all subjects. He was a mass of prejudices, large and small, and Victoria laughed at him. But when she wanted to help any particularly lame dog over any particularly high stile, she always went to Colonel Barton. A cockney doctor attached to the Workhouse had once described him to her as—'eart of gold, 'edd of feathers'—and the label had stuck.

"A Londoner, picked up badly hurt on the road, by Undershaw, I understand, and carried into the lion's den," said Andover, in answer to Barton. "And now they say he is obtaining the most extraordinary influence over the old boy."

"And the house—turned into a perfect palace!" said the rector, throwing up his hands.

The others, except Tatham, crowded eagerly round, while the rector described a visit he had paid to Faversham, within a few days of the agent's appointment, on behalf of a farmer's widow, a parishioner, under notice to quit.

"Hadn't been in the house for twenty years. The place is absolutely transformed! It used to be a pigsty. Now Faversham's rooms are fit for a prince. Nothing short of one of your rooms here"—he addressed Tatham, with a laughing gesture toward the house—"comparable to his sitting-room. Priceless things in it! And close by, an excellent office, with room for two clerks—one already at work—piles of blue-books, pamphlets, heavens knows what! And they are fitting up a telephone between Threlfall and some new rooms that he has taken for estate business in Pengarth."

"A telephone—at Threlfall!" murmured Andover.

"And Undershaw tells me that Melrose has taken the most extraordinary fancy for the young man. Everything is done for him. He may have anything he likes. And, rumour says—an enormous salary!"

"Sounds like an adventurer," grumbled Barton, "probably is."

Tatham broke in. "No, you're wrong there, Colonel. I knew Faversham at college. He's a very decent fellow—and awfully clever."

Yet, somehow, his praise stuck in his throat.

"Well, of course," said Andover with a shrug, "if he is a decent fellow, as Tatham says, he won't stay long. Do you imagine Melrose is going to change his spots?—not he!"

"Somebody must really go and talk to this chap," said Barton gloomily. "I believe Melrose will lose us the next election up here. You really can't expect people to vote for Tories, if Tories are that sort."

The talk flowed on. But Tatham had ceased to listen. For some little time there had been no voices or steps in the garden outside. They had melted into the wood beyond. But now they had returned. He perceived a white figure against a distant background of clipped yew.

Rising joyously he threw down his cigarette.

"Shall we join the ladies?"

"I say, you've had a dose of Delorme."

For he had found her still with the painter, who as soon as Tatham appeared had subsided languidly into allowing Lady Barbara to talk to him.

"Oh! but so amusing!" cried Lydia, her face twinkling. "We've picked all the Academy to pieces and danced on their bones."

"Has he asked you to sit to him?"

Lydia hesitated, and in the soft light he saw her flush.

"He said something. Of course it would be a great, great honour!"

"An honour to him," said Tatham hotly.

"I'm afraid you don't know how to respect great men!" she said laughing, as they drew out of the shadow of the Italian garden with its clipped yews and cypresses, and reached a broad terrace whence the undulations of the park stretched westward and upward into the purple fissures and clefts of the mountains. Trees, fells, grass were steeped in a wan, gold light, a mingling of sunset and moonrise. The sky was clear; the gradations of colour on the hills ethereally distinct. From a clump of trees came a soft hooting of owls; and close behind them a tall hedge of roses red and white made a bower for Lydia's light form, and filled the night with perfume.

"What do great men matter?" said Tatham incoherently as they paused; "what does anything matter—but—Lydia!"

It was a cry of pain. A hand groped for hers. Lydia startled, looked up to see the face of Tatham looking down upon her through the warm dusk—transfigured.

"You'll let me speak, won't you? I daresay it's much too soon—I daresay you can't think of it—yet. But I love you. I love you so dearly! I can't keep it to myself. I have—ever since I first saw you. You won't be angry with me for speaking? You won't think I took you by surprise? I don't want to hurry you—I only want you to know—"

Emotion choked him. Lydia, after a murmur he couldn't catch, hid her face in her hands.

He waited; and already there crept through him the dull sense of disaster. The impulse to speak had been irresistible, and now—he wished he had not spoken.

At last she looked up.

"Oh, you have been so good to me—so sweet to me," and before he knew what she was doing, she had lifted one of his hands in her two slender ones and touched it with her lips.

Outraged—enchanted—bewildered—he tried to catch her in his arms. But she slipped away from him and with her hands behind her, she looked at him, smiling through tears, her fair hair blown back from her temples, her delicate face alive with feeling.

"I can't say yes—it wouldn't be honest if I did—it wouldn't be fair to you. But, oh, dear, I'm so sorry—so dreadfully sorry—if it's my fault—if I've misled you. I thought I'd tried hard to show what I really felt—that I wanted to be friends—but not—not this. Dear Lord Tatham, I do like and admire you so much—but—"

"You don't want to marry me!" he said bitterly, turning away.

She paused a moment.

"No"—the word came with soft decision—"no. And if I were to marry you without—without that feeling—you have a right to—I should be doing wrong—to you—and to myself. You see"—she looked down, the points of her white shoe drawing circles on the grass, as though to help out her faltering speech—"I—I'm not what I believe you think me. I've got all sorts of hard, independent notions in my mind. I want to paint—and study—and travel—I want to be free—"

"You should be free as air!" he interrupted passionately.

"Ah, but no!—not if I married. I shouldn't want to be free in that way, if—"

"If you were in love? I understand. And you're not in love with me. Why should you be?" said poor Tatham, with a new and desperate humility. "Why on earth should you be? But I'd adore you—I'd give you anything in the world you wanted."

Sounds of talking and footsteps emerged from the dusk behind them; the high notes of Lady Barbara, and the answering bass of Delorme.

"Don't let them find us," said Lydia impetuously—"I've so much to say."

Tatham turned, and led the way to the pillared darkness of a pergola to their left. One side of it was formed by a high yew hedge; on the other, its rose-twined arches looked out upon the northern stretches of the park, and on the garden front of Duddon. There it lay, the great house, faintly lit; and there in front stretched its demesne, symbol of its ancient rule and of its modern power. A natural excitement passed through Lydia as they paused, and she caught its stately outline through the night. And then, the tameless something in her soul, which was her very self, rose up, rejoicing in its own strength, and yet—wistful, full of tenderness. Now!—let her play her stroke—her stroke in the new great game that was to be, in the new age, between men and women.

"Why shouldn't we just be friends?" she urged. "I know it sounds an old, stale thing to say. But it isn't. There's a new meaning in it now, because—because women are being made new. It used to be offering what we couldn't give. We could be lovers; we weren't good enough—we hadn't stuff enough—to be friends. But now—dear Lord Tatham—just try me—" She held out to him two hands, which he took against his will. "I like you so much!—I know that I should love your mother. Now that we've had this out, why shouldn't we build up something quite fresh? I want a friend—so badly!"

"And I want something—so much more than a friend!" he said, pressing her hands fiercely.

"Ah, but give it up!" she pleaded. "If you can't, I mustn't come here any more, nor you to us. And why? It would be such a waste—of what our friendship might be. You could teach me so many things. I think I could teach you some."

He dropped her hands, mastering himself with difficulty.

"It's nonsense," he said shortly; "I know it's nonsense! But—if I promised not to say anything of this kind again for a year?"

She pondered. There were compunctions, remorses, in her. As Susan had warned her, was she playing with a man's heart and life?

But her trust in her own resources, the zest of spiritual adventure, and a sheer longing to comfort him prevailed.

"You'll promise that; and I'll promise—just to be as nice to you as ever I can!" She paused. They looked at each other; the trouble in his eyes questioning the smile in hers. "Now please!—my friend!"—she slid dexterously, though very softly, into the everyday tone—"will you advise me? Mr. Delorme has asked me to sit to him. Just a sketch in the garden—for a picture he's at work on. You would like me to accept?"

She stood before him, her eyes raised, with the frank gentleness of a child. Yet there was a condition implied in the question.

Tatham broke out—passionately,

"Just tell me. There's—there's no one else?"

She suffered for him; she hastened to comfort him.

"No, no—indeed there's no one else. Though, mind, I'm free. And so are you. Shall I come to-morrow?" she asked again, with quiet insistence.

There was a gulp in Tatham's throat. Yet he rose—dismally—to her challenge.

"You would do what I like?" he asked, quivering.

"Indeed I would."

"I invited Delorme here—just to please you—and because I hoped he'd paint you."

"Then that's settled!" she said, with a little sigh of satisfaction.

"And what, please, am I to do—that you'd like?" She looked up mischievously.

"Call me Lydia—forget that you ever wanted to marry me—and don't mind a rap what people say!"

He laughed, through his pain, and gravely took her hand.

"And now," said Lydia, "I think it's time to go home."

* * * * *

When all the guests were gone, when Gerald and Delorme had smoked their last interminable cigars, and Delorme had made his last mocking comments on the "old masters" who adorned the smoking-room, Tatham saw him safely to bed, and returned to his sitting-room on the ground floor. The French window was open, and he passed out into the garden. Soon, in his struggle with himself, he had left the garden and the park behind, and was climbing the slope of the fells. The play of the soft summer winds under the stars, the scents of bracken and heather and rushes, the distant throbbing sounds that rose from the woods as the wind travelled through them—and soon, the short mountain turf beneath his feet, and around and below him, the great shapes of the hills, mysteriously still, and yet, as it seemed to him, mysteriously alive—these things spoke to him and, little by little, calmed his blood.

It was the first anguish of a happy man. When, presently, he lay safe hidden in a hollow of the lonely fell, face downward among the moonlit rocks, some young and furious tears fell upon the sod. That quiet strength of will in so soft a creature—a will opposed to his will—had brought him up against the unyieldingness of the world. The joyous certainties of life were shaken to their base; and yet he could not, he did not, cease to hope.